and also

I'd like to point out that this is a drawing that I made today, Monday, June 4th 2012.  That's right, four years of art school lead up to this one truly glorious expression of my creativity/talent.  

Enough said!

epilogue

Art school was cool 'n stuff.  I'll probably miss certain things about it.  I'm gonna try my darndest to have a job in the artz now.  Hopefully I'll still be a creator of stuff.  Who am I kidding, I am always going to create thingz.  In addition to being a creator of stuff, I'd like to be a curator of stuff.  I should probably work on my writing a little bit now, I have some ideas for a couple blog posts for the F-bomb, a cool feminist blog for young galz like myself and my l'il sis.  Maybe they're good.  Maybe they suck.  We will soon find out.  Also, I'm applying for a "real" job.  That's cool.  It's the director of the auxiliary gallery space/resource center/artist-in-residence quarters with my favorite artist run center.  Even if I don't get it (which I probably won't due to a lack of "professional" work and references...oops self deprecation...shit) the worst that can happen is they will have my CV/resume/brilliantly written cover letter...free of typos (hopefully...as aforementioned, my writing has gotten sloppy and weird of late).  So as often as they keep posting jobs, I'll keep applying until something materializes.  Right now, I've been ultra-busy completing the May Challenge.  Well, it's now June, so challenge completed.  It entailed attending 31 yoga classes over the course of 31 days, which I actually managed to do.  I have a muscle now.  I've also been busy working at the greenhouse, loving my plant babies and loving my life.  It doesn't pay much, but sweet jesus, it's glorious sometimes.  Especially when I make fun projects for myself such as making plant displays look pretty and reading gardening magazines during evening shifts.   Otherwise, I graduated uni.  My little sis (same as aforementioned) graduated high school.  Milestones, cool.  Now that I have an evening free of yoga (I spent the most of it gardening instead!) I can actually update this blog thing.  I clued into the ghetto glory that is photobucket.  Early 00s anyone?  So now I can upload pictures again.  One last thing: soon I hope to have an actual artist website that has a nice collection of my work, my bio and CV.  This blog is far too informal, but probably the most authentic version of myself.

Okay, so here are my top 15 favorite thingz that I made during my time at art school (in no particular order) :

#1
Okay, since I'm being rather self involved by blogging in the first place, I'll start with a self-portrait that I did in second year.  It's the only self portrait that I've ever really felt looked remotely like myself, so that's cool.  Plus the old lady head ornaments prove that I have not changed that much since two years ago (which is probably not a good thing)

#2
This is part of a video installation that I did this past semester.  My teacher told me that Bill Viola would be proud, so I took that as a big complement.  I made this with off-brand pepto bismol and my fingerprints.  I think I should send it around as my artist statement.  Maybe that'd be pretentious.

#3
I like this painting a lot because a) I was a painting major who actually loved to paint (shock!) and b) it was done early on in my second year by using fleshy pinks, charcoal and glitter on un-stretched canvas.  Apparently my fascination with flesh tones and hot pink goes back a little ways.  This is fun.  Sort of like self-analysis!  And yes, I realize that the drips are totally lame.  Can't say that I give a fuck.

#4
I think that these totally worked better as photo-compositions than anything else.  It was like I tried so hard to make a precious object, but quickly realized that ephemera can be fun.  I did this whole series of these weird mirrored panels with globs and weird egg sacs and drawings in the first semester of third year.  More than anything, this proves that I am probably related to crows because I am so obsessed with shiny things.

#5
By the second semester of third year, I ended up with a really friggin' amazing instructor, visiting from Australia from the year.  She was a) a feminist and b) a multi-media artist so needless to say, I pretty much want to be her.  We are now facebook friends which rules.  Anyways, I could see that my work was heading in the direction of digital/video, and she gave me the push I need to de-tether myself to the notion of "art object".  As a result, I gave in to my inner desire to sit in the studio blowing bubbles into bowls of paint and other viscous mixtures that I hand-crafted and film what happens.  This series is called Body Without Organs, and yes, I actually named my blog after it.  In my art school career, I consider this video to be my seminal work.  I seriously mean that in the least pretentious manner possible.

#6
Studio leavings.  I am like a hamster, crafting myself a nest of things around me.  Like a fortress of stuff.  These third-year studio nestings later lead to fourth-year studio nestings, which influenced a whole grad piece.  Incidentally, I am really OCD about cleanliness and organization in spite of myself.

#7
My Pinkie!  When I was a child, my treasured transitional object was a pinkish (later-turned-grey) blanket (later-turned-tatters) named Pinkie.  It was really soft and I had this weird thing where I would always bunch it up in my hands and run it through my fingers (this is the reason why it is now in grey tatters)  I promise that this odd behavior did not lead to later fetishism.  It did, however, prove my early obsessions with the tactile/sensory.  This was a video that I made at the start of my last year, and it is weird and I love it.  The sounds are weird too.  Originally, I wanted to film what would happen if I filled a stretchy object with shaving cream and then let it leak out a pinhole.  Wow, this sort of does sound like fetishism after all... 

#8
I made all these ink on rag paper universes during second year.  I think I obsessively made about 35 of them.  They are small, but I like to consider them as the impulsive need to create something that is well beyond the scope of the tangible.  Maybe it just proves that I'm always in my own world.  I'm not sure, but the universal/galactic/nebulous has always been a recurrent image in my mind that I can't seem to shake.  Also, a really cool guy bought a few of these. 

#9
I like to remind myself that I can actually paint "something".  I can also draw something.  I did this in my first year painting class.  It was the first time I made and stretched my own frame/canvas.  The dimensions are kind of awkward.  I also like to think that this proves that even as a know-nothing first year, I had an interest in feminism/gender-politics (sort of?) as well as the (slightly) grotesque.  Okay, maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but this my first year work at its freest. 

#10
Once again, ephemera can be fun.  It can also be covered in a slightly damp and musky film.  It can also secrete and ooze sediment from its porous derma.  I made this during third year sometime, and it was another series comprised of about 30 or so photographs.  The object itself is totally banal and throwaway, but the photos elicited quite the response during crits.  It's always nice when your work can make somebody stop eating their yogurt.

#11
Yes! I can still draw.  Made this last semester during a second year elective drawing class.  I loved making this, as I spent several hours working on it while watching Teen Mom, it really took me back to the way I used to work during first year/pre-art school days, which is synonymous with art being fun.  I photocopied my favorite bit and refined it a little more, and am actually considering it as a tattoo.

#12
These are some objects that I made last semester.  They hung proudly on my wall,  which was like the Island of Misfit Toys.  Actually, they were like the rejects that wouldn't even be invited to the Misfit Toys' parties.  These beckoned for me to touch them and love them (again, not in a fetish-y way), and in return, they promised to touch you back.  

#13
I made this series of videos called VOID during the first semester of my fourth year.  Basically, that little nipple thing goes in and bubbles back up and kind of watches you with its ocular gaze.  During my panel crit, one jury member told me that I needed to "kill" my "darlings", apparently the pink glittery surroundings being my darling.  Then he proceeded to validate me of my talents, and urge me to apply to European graduate schools.  Sometimes, you gotta love a good mixed message.

#14
Soft Bodied: my grad piece.  Enough said.  (That doesn't necessarily mean that I love this more than anything, in fact there are several things that I probably love more, including my mother, for one.  But I am happy with this piece that I produced for the final show at ACAD that I'd ever take part in- probably.  I kind of wish I had a video to accompany it, but hey, I graduated from the Painting dept., so I wanted to represent (woo) with something object-y, and painterly.  So that's cool)  Oh yes, now that I have unlimited photo uploading, tons of detail shots to come shortly. 

#15
Another video version of Pinkie.  I enjoy how it looks 2-D.  It's actually 3-D.  Well, as 3-D as a video projection can possibly be.  How oxymoronical.

Note to self: be more professional

Next week, I plan on documenting my studio/ in progress-grad piece-work/ weird objects.

It's been a while since I've actually lost sleep thinking excitedly about a body of work, so I suppose I should be thankful that I only got a total of four hours slumber last night.  But this is the price one pays when thinking through problems and planning wonderful artz.  I've been working steadily since last friday, on some strange new things that will be my grad piece.  I just love to be near my objects, working on or around them.  In a super creepy way, my little objects/items/sculptural hybrids are like my children, though as one instructor pointed out, they do feel as though they are the rejects from the Island of Misfit Toys, and have those faces that only a mother could love.  And love them I do.

I really need to stop turning this blog thing into a diary, especially since I don't really have too many photos these days to support and validate my inner thoughtz.

Seriously, photos to come.  In the meantime, here is a still from a super creepy random video that I made for no real reason other than "because I could".

Bearz Jamboree

Yield & Hoard

Uhh. So here's some installation shots of my piece that's in a month-long group show in my school's library (WTF, I know).  It's not my favorite work by any means (read: one of my least favorites EVER!) because of the bizarre conceptual parameters assigned to this show (it's for a mandatory studio-ish class that is required for graduation), as well as a substantial amount of time to prepare for the show (I suppose I ended up stagnating in my freedom...) however, I am a firm believer in taking pride of ownership, so I did my best to document and contextualize my reasoning for making what I made.

Anyways, here's my artist statement:

Yield & Hoard (2012)

Michelle Liane Baillargeon

Mixed media installation (ongoing)

“Play” is the locus of everything that I make.  Good luck finding any substantial literature on this subject, though.  Believe me, I’ve looked.  What research I have done, however, has often lead me to material in this dead-ended alcove.  

So I’ll show you play.  

From playing I make objects: stretchy things, shiny things, hole-y things, tentacled things, things which exist solely for my enjoyment.  Playing is a rather hedonistic process.  I also make videos.  They sort of look like my objects: nebulous, primordial, fleshy, and invertebrate, and they are derived through the same sensory-satiating means of play.  The parallel among both bodies of work is through my obsessive collection of residue: studio residue, psychological residue, digital residue.  Yield & Hoard both consolidates and archives some of the material and immaterial residues of my working process through some of my favorite objects, materials and film stills.  This is what I’ve discovered about playing.  Feel free to take a gander.

Procrastination

Ah reading week. The sweet respite from school.  Don't get me wrong, my schedule is incredibly wonderful, what with only having classes three days a week, and having the freedom to more or less come and go as I please, not to mention that intrinsic optimism that tells me to enjoy these scarce few final months of art school.  But I just can't seem to muster much motivation to continue making art, let alone applying for various shows and publications that would be well-suited to my practice.  So instead I put much of my effort into compiling a suitable list of TV series and movies that I want to download and watch, now that I have successfully finished watching the entirety of several shows (in order of viewing: Mad Men, Daria, The Big Bang Theory, The Walking Dead, and Roseanne- all since September.  Except Mad Men, I suppose.  That was last semester.)  And also I have stocked up on my yarn collection, as the only thing that I find more enjoyable than sitting in my bed and watching countless episodes of a program, is sitting in my bed watching episodes and knitting.  So yes.  I lack motivation to go on.  And I have to be at school tomorrow at 9 to set up for a group show.  But I digress.  This was by far my best reading week ever- the last three having spent holed up with 

a) the flu

b) a terrible cold/wisdom tooth extraction

c) strep throat. 

This year I spent a week in Oklahoma with my love visiting his family and generally eating everything and anything in sight.  We went off to Dallas for two days to view the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (much to my chagrin the Lynda Benglis sculptures that I beyond love were sitting in storage collecting dust! FUCK!) and also to see some beautiful japanese botanical gardens.  So that was pretty cultural, I'd say.

Overall a fantastic week enjoying nice weather, sleeping in, shopping, antiquing, and eating tasty Southern fare.  

Back to work now.

Oh but first, a few snapshots of the gardens:

Crafty gal

My Christmas-break craft list was ambitious and lengthy.  It contained DIY projects that involved constructing festive Anthropologie-inspired throw pillows, crocheted afghans with scalloped edges in a veritable palette of glittery holiday colors (to give away as presents, of course!), upcycled, repurposed wood headboards, macrame chandeliers, vintage-y book paper chains, and plans to turn pine cones into everything and anything- from a tableau of the nativity scene (perhaps a vapid gesture to compensate for my standing as a once-per-year-church-going lax Catholic), to Christmas dinner place cards, to peanut butter smeared bird feeders. 

So it turns out that I don't know how to use a sewing machine.  I hardly know the difference between the knit and purl stitches, and have yet to know the carnal pleasures of crochet.  I doubt the old bits of motor-oil soaked lumber sitting in my dad's garage would make for a particularly sanitary home furnishing (but who knows, I am the gal who spied a nifty green chair on the curb and stopped to take it home!), and I can honestly say that I can't even give a proper definition of the word "macrame", though I do know from my french-immersion school upbringing, that the "e" at the end there has an accent-aigu (or is it the other one?) and is pronounced "MA-CRA-MAY".   As for the other crap, I decided that my time would be better spent watching daytime reruns of Maury and Dr Drew's Lifechangers, than bothering to track down cool old books to desecrate.  

But I did accomplish one thing on my list! Upon one trip to the ol' Salvation Army thrift store with my buddy, I came across a sweet little floral-pattern bone china teacup, for only one dollar (a much better deal than at the Goodwill, where the same item would run upwards of seven dollars! Mutiny, I tell you!). So I went to Michaels the following week, where I picked up some lavender-scented soy wax beads and some soy wicks, and melted them down into this lovely little candle.  If I were more professional-like, akin to the plethora of craft blogs that I follow, I would have properly documented the process, and followed it with a written step-by-step.  But to that I say "who gives a fuck". 

So here is my homemade, little-old-lady lavender candle! Because I basically am that little old lady, but with a sailor's mouth.

Crafting success!

The lavender wax smells s'darn good!

Please sir!